He'll wring her neck. No, the squid ink will wear off soon, and he's not about to let Emma Swan outfox him yet again. His revenge hinges on her being out of the way, as it did before.
"Get on with it, Captain," Zelena almost yawns. "That squid ink's going to wear off soon."
Mmm, how satisfying to know he no longer requires the Witch's help to remember everything that happened in Camelot. The moment he viewed the first event in the dreamcatcher, memories gushed into his mind all the way up to watching the ash that had once been the great Sorcerer Merlin's heart cascade into a cauldron filled with Dark Curse. He'd never been much for planning everything out to the last detail, but the last time he'd been all set to go, Swan had come along from her strange, magic-less world and completely botched everything. Well, no time like the present to remedy that, he thinks, glaring at her. Following her logic, one can't stop what one has forgotten.
"Killian, please. What are you doing?" she demands, her voice hoarse, the slightest twitch in her arm indicating he's dangerously close to losing his advantage.
"You took my memories, Swan. You tried to stop me from knowing the truth. And now I'm going to return the favor."
Dreamcatchers—a crude, rather simplistic form of magic, but they get the job done; he'll give them that. Merely holding one up and willing it to absorb certain memories from a person, namely the knowledge of bringing former Dark Ones back to walk the earth, renders Swan a wide-eyed, confused creature desperately trying to remember what he took away. He knows only too well what fighting that particular losing battle is like.
Zelena laughs at Swan's dumbfounded expression. "By the look on your face, it would appear someone needs restraining."
As she clasps the cuff around Swan's wrist, he watches the latter's shoulders sink a fraction, something akin to a shiver coursing up her throat into her jaw.
"There. No more magic for you," Zelena sings.
I didn't know you were such a fan of my magic.
Why would you say that, Swan? I'm a fan of every part of you.
Killian narrows his eyebrows at her. She deprived him of so much more than the ability to cast just a few paltry spells, so the nagging feelings of guilt must be nothing more than remnants of his old way of thinking.
"Now," Zelena, done with her childish taunts, says as she faces him. "I assume, given my helpfulness, you'll allow me to go about my business undeterred."
"As long as you don't get in my way, I won't get in yours."
"Ah, I like this new you!" she purrs, raking awed, saucer-sized eyes over him. "Tell me, how does it feel to be a Dark One?"
"It feels like I've been reborn," he says, and he supposes that's the truth of it. Refusing to give the other Dark One the dignity of a last look, he weaves around Zelena and marches through the kitchen and out the side door. Bloody hell, if it is indeed his house—and it is—he will be the one utilizing it or not utilizing it. Walking across the small garden to the shed, he follows the scent of magic to the lock and melts it with the lightest touch of his fingertips.
All around him, dreamcatchers hang all around, their patterns more intricate the further he ventures into the shed. There is no need to even bother with the ones nearest the doors, products of a preoccupied mind, made in this world, no magic to speak of. He wants the earlier ones, with the lopsided circles. They might not appear to be any more special than the others, decorated with makeshift materials rather than the manifested ones on the table in the center of the shed, but she'd imbued these with the memories of her family, and he's immersed himself in that family long enough to know they could actually defeat him.
They'll all have to go, he decides, stepping back to decide where he'll hide them from everyone. Not paying attention, his head brushes the bottom of one. Henry's. Swallowing and jerking back from the boy's memories, he closes his eyes and instead imagines a prominent place in Storybrooke, one where the dreamcatchers can remain hidden, but guarded, so that if Swan should find them—and she has proven to be exceptional at finding—they'll be just out of her magical reach.
A puff of smoke and a burning odor register extra intensely with him, his senses heightened while he keeps his eyes snapped shut. In an instant, he opens them to the sight of the clocktower with the red mist of his magic evaporating into the air.
Perfect. Now then...the Crocodile. Oh, he'll leave Mrs. Crocodile out of it for now. Resourceful she may be when a book tells her what to do, but her inexplicable willingness to fight for the beast just doesn't have the same punch that it used to, her heart a little too chewed-up by her precious Rumple by now. Hell, at this point, he's not even sure forcing her to watch the bastard die would be a punishment or a reward. And he will die. At the hands of the Dark Ones, certainly, but Killian prefers a go at making the demon suffer first.
When the first rays of sunlight light up Main Street in all its beige glory, he folds his arms and does nothing more than observe the sparse number of passers-by on their way to their trades, borrowing the idea for a jacket here, a pair of trousers there. He'll not confront the dapper Rumpelstiltskin looking like a peasant.
Standing across from the pawn shop, he smirks at the "closed" sign until he flips it over to "open." Let them wonder how that happened, he thinks, strutting over to the door. There's no more magic for Rumpelstiltskin to hide behind today. Circumstances seem to have worked themselves out. Throwing open the door with a wave of his hand, he grins at the sound of it slamming into the bell.
"Killian!" Belle gasps, hand flying to her chest, an uneasy laugh escaping her. "You scared me. Did you find anything out?"
"Come on out, Crocodile," he calls into the space past her. "It's time to finally be parted from that slippery skin of yours."
Belle's lip falls and her head snaps from him to the back room and back to him again, but she doesn't speak. Finally, Rumpelstiltskin emerges, cane and all.
"I take it from your tone, we're no longer on the same side," Rumpelstiltskin sighs.
Killian laughs. "I'm afraid you don't understand, Crocodile! You've plagued me my entire life, and here I find you sitting pretty in quite the nice little shop after you've betrayed countless people in two worlds now...why the bloody hell would we have ever been on the same side?"
"Okay," Belle says, stepping in front of her former husband, palms facing him. "What's going on? The last time you were here, you wanted information that could help you find Emma."
"Well, that was before I knew she turned me into a Dark One," he says, being sure to shrug as he begins playing with the tip of his hook. "She's funny like that."
"Emma turned you into a Dark One?" Belle blurts, incredulous at the whole thing. Killian doesn't see why. Doesn't everyone in town know how much the Lady Swan hates being alone? It's called Dark One, not Dark Two.
"And now you've come for your revenge," the Crocodile concludes.
"The thought had crossed my mind." He stalks toward him, hook first. "For this...lovely piece of hardware, I think I'll take your hand." Pausing, he cocks his head. This needs the Crocodile's brand of finesse. Oh, how Killian's watched him time and again stand behind that counter and wax poetic about this or that, all too eager to prove how much better he was than his audience. So he brings his feet closer together, knees touching, hand gesturing and providing emphasis since audience members clearly couldn't understand every big word. "For Milah, your heart. For filling Emma with the Darkness...hmm, I think your head will do quite nicely."
"So what are you waiting for? Get on with it," Rumpelstiltskin attempts to call his bluff. The coward tries to call the Dark One's bluff. Rich.
"No. No, no, no, no, no, no. No. I've been waiting centuries for this moment, and I really want to..." Small wonder the imp always took such glee in doing this sort of thing, Killian thinks, breathing in deeply. "Savor it." Picking a sword up off the shelf, he slides it on the floor at the Crocodile's feet. Let's see—the condescending tone, the irony...what else was missing from his Rumpelstiltskin-inspired performance? Hmm? Ah. Flourish.
"Get your affairs in order, dearie!" he belts out, arms up in a wide, theatrical pose. "For we duel at noon on my ship! Where it all began."
"How poetic," Rumpelstiltskin notes. Well, that is the idea. "But we both know this weapon can't kill you."
Killian must admit, he's a little disappointed at the lack of groveling from the man. Where is all the cowardice? No tearful pleas to spare him, followed by throwing his own wife in front of him as a human shield? He'd always chosen himself, ruining Bae, murdering Milah, toying with Snow and David, threatening Henry, deceiving Emma...not that any of that matters now.
"Ah, true. That sword can't kill me. But this one..." All he needs to do is imagine Excalibur in his hand, and suddenly it's there. "Can."
"Excalibur," Rumpelstiltskin sighs.
"You have it?" Belle asks, as if she only half-believed all this.
"Aye. Now that it's whole, it can no longer control me. But it can...oh, oh oh!" He pretends that it slips loose, that every attempt to secure it comes closer to jabbing the Crocodile with it. "Kill me. All you have to do is take it from me. So, what say you, Crocodile? Shall we finish what we started?"
"Indeed," Rumpelstiltskin says, giving him that look of cold hatred, always simmering, just always right on the cusp of boiling over. Good. That's how he wants him.
What to do until noon? His red smoke, apart from giving off the musty, burned odor that must be identical to hellfire, proves an efficient way to travel, allowing him to check that the dreamcatchers remain dangled from the tip-top of the clocktower, all accounted for and un-tampered with, which means no one's come close to stopping him.
Where could they all be? He glances up at the apartment on his right and weighs the consequences of "poofing" up to them all. As luck would have it, he can't think of a single reason not to do it, and it's not as if he needs to rein in his impulse control any time soon.
He now stands in the middle of the apartment, empty with the lights off, giving every pastel-covered thing a touch of melancholy. How did they all live like this, so cramped? Nothing escapes a shabby description, not even the relatively new cradle for their little son, the wood already bearing scratches. Running up to the middle of the staircase, he holds onto the railing and leans back, imagining free-falling over the side.
Spinning back around, he leaps up to the loft where neither David nor Snow had taken the time to fix the bed after he'd lain in it the night before last. How unlike Snow White. She must really be fretting over her daughter's condition. Shaking his head, he throws back the blanket and runs his hand over the red—no—scarlet sheets. He'd once been entranced by them, wondering so many things about Emma Swan, if she tossed and turned, if she dreamed, if she had ever cried out his name in a breathless gasp right before waking. It would boggle her mind to know how often he'd woken up still thrusting his hips into her image.
It's not too late, he thinks, angling his head at the memory of her golden hair against the pillow. She's still a Dark One, still susceptible to temptation. Perhaps he can waggle an eyebrow at her and knock a chunk of her walls down without watching her walk away this time. And, once she's reduced to a wet, whimpering mess, he'll break her heart.
All he has to do is visualize her, and the magic transports him to none other than Regina's house. Not theirs, he ponders, cocking his head in disappointment. No. Shaking his head, he strikes that notion. They share nothing but a soured past now.
How they'll all gape at him when he strolls in, he thinks with a grin. It will be like that night at the diner all over again, the Dark One playing a role, maybe as the contrite lost soul he'd been before. The pretext of a private word with Swan about matters only penitent Dark Ones could understand would be the perfect way to make her beg for him, bring her to her knees so she'll lie in a broken heap when he leaves her for good.
Like so many other people. His wrath, she deserves, but that pattern...always being left alone. At least he had a brother. At least he had a woman who loved him for a few short years. Feeling alone and unlovable for so long must surely do things to a person...
"You know, when Regina asked me to guard you, the last thing I wanted to do was be in the same room as you. Now that we're here, this isn't so bad," he hears a thick female brogue in one of the rooms down the hall. Surprisingly, no one meets him at the door. He hears no sounds of frantic page-turning, all those exhausted sighs of fruitless searching. Hanging back, he peers into the room to find Merida doing a mediocre impression of a predator stalking its prey, her bow at the ready. Making out a black, human-shaped form lying on the sofa, he can only deduce that Swan has elected to stay behind while her family is off doing something they consider more productive. Or perhaps they hadn't trusted her enough to join them.
"Put it down, Merida. We both know you're not going to shoot me," Swan half-groans, not gracing Merida with eye contact. She should have crushed her heart when she'd had the chance; they could have used the wisps to locate Merlin and avoided Arthur altogether. And yet he'd been the idiot to talk her out of it.
You wanted what was best for her, a small but insistent voice tells him.
Ah, but what was best for you, he asks it. All this time putting her first, choosing her over all else...and it resulted in villainy for both of them. Job well done.
"Oh, won't I?" Merida snaps. "After everything you've done to me? Fine. I'd say an arrow to the knee would do you right good. And maybe me too."
She smiles as she takes aim. No, no, no. If anyone is going to hurt Emma Swan, it's going to be someone who's been long overdue for it. Not some random lass she met in passing.
"Don't worry, love," he calls into the room, announcing his presence. Swan sits up, much like a recently-kissed princess waking from an enchanted sleep, but he can't dwell on that. He has arrows to catch. With a wave of his hand, Merida flies back and hits the wall hard. "A broken knee is nothing on a broken heart. Isn't that right, Swan?"
She regards him silently, looking him over and trying to read him. The effort she puts into it—the slightest pinching of her brow, the forced calm. Like the very first time he gazed into those hazel eyes and wondered what she thought of him.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I'm pretty good at knowing when someone is lying to me.
Well, then he just won't lie. There's no need to tell one. She's so bloody powerless now anyway, not even her family around to shield her.
"What is this?" he asks, half-expecting them to all leap out and yell "surprise." "I expected to find you and the heroes huddled over a mountain of books trying to figure out my terrible plan."
"That's not why you're here," she says, standing and crossing over to him without any fear. "You're here because you still have feelings for me."
How dare she? Every fiber of his being tenses at her accusation as doubt settles in, doubt that he's more what she says he is than what he—the Darkness—no. What he says he is. To hell with seducing her. There's no longer any sport in it.
"Oh, Swan," he sighs. "Of course I still have feelings for you. Anger. Hatred. Disappointment..."
"You don't mean that."
Ah. She had expected him to be the pathetic creature he was in Neverland, following her around because he had nothing else to live for, exerting himself, exhausting himself, humiliating himself, and all for her. That's what he'll spend his time doing instead of seducing her—he'll set her straight.
"When you tethered me to Excalibur, you opened my eyes. And I now see you for what you really are—an anchor." It's so perfect an analogy, he has to laugh. "And I see clearly now that you were nothing more than a pretty, blonde distraction. But guess what, Swan? I am a free man now, and you will never hold me back from getting what I want again."
And what is it you want, he asks himself. He's asked it of himself before, when he doubted revenge was the answer. He'd thought he'd outlived his revenge, Rumpelstiltskin dead in his son's apartment—the unwanted father all the way to the end. And yet, his life's purpose met, he'd felt depleted rather than exhilarated, lonely rather than satisfied. Does he want revenge again?
"Hook...Killian," Swan says in a low voice. She searches his face, but it isn't imploring so much as, well, rational. "Whatever deal you made to get your revenge on Gold...it's not worth it. The Darkness is using you. It doesn't care what you want. It only cares what it wants."
No one would be able to understand that like her, and she has no reason to lie to him...but she's a dead end. Her actions in Camelot proved that. Only caring about what it wants, indeed.
"Well, you're only a pawn if you don't know you're being used," he counters. "As long as I get what I want, I don't give a damn about the rest, and you of all people should understand that."
"Everything I did, I did for you," she argues.
"Well, you see, there's your problem, Swan!" Killian taunts. Had he known how transparent she was back when he thought he was in love with her? Gods, she has no idea what an open book she is. "You're so afraid of losing the people that you love that you push them away."
She's mesmerized, completely absorbed in his words, as is the way of all harsh truths. Hurt them before they hurt you, and it seems that went double for him. So sure he'd walk out on her once she let down all those walls, not giving him enough credit to do anything but use her and then grow bored with her...
Only because that's how strong her feelings were for you.
Not strong enough to take a chance.
She loves you.
Those three words alone means he must break whatever's left of her heart. Edging closer to her, he holds his breath when she does, widens his eyes when she does. Close enough to kiss her, he lowers his voice to a whisper.
"And that's why you'll always be an orphan." Ignore the tears in her eyes. Ignore the way her entire jaw trembles. "You don't need some villain swooping in to destroy your happiness. You do that quite well all on your own."
"Why are you doing this?" she asks in so hushed a voice, he can barely hear it. Part of him longs to cup her face and cradle her, to take it all back, but she can never take back what she did to him.
"Because," he whispers, suddenly not sure how to feel, if he should smile, if he should cry, if he should just magic himself away from her now. "I want to hurt you. Like you hurt me."
There can be nothing else to say. Backing away from her, it unnerves him how she watches him go, that she doesn't turn her head away to weep.
There was surely no fairer sight than Milah resting on his chest with that tired, spent, radiantly content look on her face. Her thick black curls cover his arm and the fingers of his opposite hand glide up and down her bare back all the way to the end of her spine. He's just asked her if they'd made the right decision. To sail away and leave it all behind—was it bravery or cowardice?
"Do you remember the night we first met?" she asks, yawning in spite of her serious tone.
"Aye, I was trying everything I could think of to get you to come away with me." Inhaling, he adjusts the back of his head against the pillow. The amber lantern light casts sharp shadows and soft light on everything all at once, perhaps on their decision as well. "That night, you were quite adamant about fulfilling your obligations."
"And look what happened as a result," she says, snuggling into his chest. This, he could get used to. He's not...absolutely sure this is love, but he knows how tired he is of being alone, and he's even more sure there's not someone out there he'd rather share adventures with than her, not if he looked for centuries.
"So you're saying you should have run away with me sooner. I'll take that as a compliment." He lifts his head just enough for her to look up at him waggling an eyebrow at her. Chuckling, she plops her head back down on him and brings the blanket up over them.
"I don't know, truth be told. We're probably in over our heads. We probably won't know until it's too late, one way or another."
"Ever the optimistic one, aren't you?"
"I just know when I listened to you talk of all these places, I could also hear how empty it all felt to you, like you needed someone to share it with to have any meaning." Shrugging, she rolls off of him, but slides her arm through his. He holds her hand and blows out the flame in the lantern. "Just...just promise me, if at any time you think you're going down the wrong road, you'll correct yourself before it's too late."
"You're not a wrong road. You never will be." Holding her more tightly, he closes his eyes and lies awake for a while.
He's performing feats of magic with the same degree of effort as opening and closing his eyes. He's severed his ties with Emma Swan and didn't turn to ash as a result. He's been run through with a sword and didn't die. Voices in his head assure him this is how it should be, that he is better before; there is no need to be afraid of anything. But six weeks ago, wasn't he watching the Darkness consume whomever it could, swallowing Emma up whole and then vanishing without a trace? It hadn't cared about what he had wanted then, or her, for that matter. It all makes him wonder if he's in over his head, going down a wrong road.
So, tell us, Hook. We're willing to die for our cause. Are you willing to die for yours?
That had been the question that had started him down the redemption road in the first place, Greg and Tamara claiming they were prepared to die when they were in reality orchestrating the deaths of everyone around them, and he'd answered no in his heart. He'd wanted a life, a happy one. It just wasn't something he deserved.
"You still don't."
"Bugger off. Don't taunt me," he hisses at the apparition of Rumpelstiltskin.
"A bit testy, aren't we? Well, being stabbed a few times will do that to you, even if the wounds aren't lethal."
"You speak as if you believe I forgot the plan," Killian retorts. For a Dark One, the imp could be so stupid at times. "You wanted to meet here, at this pond, after I bled Rumpelstiltskin, and I did just that." Holding up his hook for emphasis, he sneers at the Crocodile's gleeful little jump into the air as he claps his hands. It had felt overpoweringly good to fight the coward on the Jolly Roger's deck, but now...well, it reminded him of being tied up in the back of that truck, hours upon hours to contemplate what to do next, flashes of blonde hair and hazel eyes intercutting his thoughts.
"Congratulations. You didn't completely fail," the Darkness admits. "You returned from your duel with exactly the right ingredients for our plan—the blood of a man who'd been to hell and back. Rumplestiltskin has done what few can claim. He died, and then he returned. This pond holds a portal to the Underworld itself."
"This is where the Fury tried to drag Robin Hood to hell," Killian argues. "I thought the portal only appeared when the moon reaches its zenith."
"Yes, for a Fury. But it's always existed, dearie. You just have to know how to open it."
So that's where the blood comes in. Well, his hook is in need of cleaning anyway. Sauntering over to the pond, he stoops down and shakes his hook out in the water, the blood wafting in the water and soon filling it, turning the whole thing into a still, opaque surface with a blue mist hovering around it. A boat, as black as the water, creeps toward them.
"Bloody hell." He's in over his head. The Dark One shouldn't feel fear, but he does, so much so he's on the verge of panicking, of turning tail and bolting away.
"That's exactly where that came from," Rumpelstiltskin says, his chest puffed out in pride as he watches the boat.
A hooded, masked figure leaves the others and steps out onto the water, lithely walking on top of it with scarcely a ripple to be had. Breathing in, he steadies himself. He is a Dark One, their peer. This isn't like Greg and Tamara, the blind, stupid fools. This isn't like agreeing to take Milah as far from her husband as possible. This time, he's the one in control. He can handle it.
Please. You couldn't handle it.
Not then. But he can now. Extending his arm out of habit, he helps the figure onto land, certain he's spoken with this Dark One before, the one who knows what she's doing, who has had more years of practice at this than the lot of them.
"Nimue," he says.
"We're here. All of us, as promised, in the flesh. And now it's time to get to work, to do what Dark Ones do best—snuff out the light." She motions with her head at the boat full of former Dark Ones, and he must respond, or else he won't be in control. He won't be able to handle it.
"Welcome to Storybrooke, love," is the cleverest thing he can conceive.
A/N: Okay, so way back when 4x22 aired and Robin tried to jump into the Darkness to pull Regina out, I joked about there being a Dark One and Dark Two. Little did I know... Coming up? You aren't going to like it. I sure didn't.
